“Swifty’s dead.”
“Is he? Well, then, he’s not much better than Sibley.” He trails off. “Who am I?” he asks her.
“You’re my man,” she says.
“Well, they certainly did a good job when they cast you as my wife—whose idea was that?”
“Dore Schary,” she says.
He nods. “And who am I really?”
“Who would you like to be?”
They sit in silence. “May I be excused?”
She nods. He gets up from the table and heads down the hall toward his office. Every afternoon he writes letters and pays bills. He uses an out-of-date checkbook and one-cent stamps, sometimes a whole sheet on a single envelope. He spits on the back of the sheet of stamps, rubs the spit around, and wraps the letter in postage.
“Would you like me to mail that?” she asks when he is done.
“This one’s for you,” he often says, handing her an envelope.
“I look forward to receiving it,” she says, taking the envelope from him.
Once, a letter was accidentally mailed—a five-thousand-dollar donation to a Palestinian Naturalists’ Organization—Nude in the Desert.
Every day he writes her a letter. His handwriting is unsteady and she can’t always read every word, but she tries.
Mommy—
I see you. I love you always. Love, Me.
He smiles. There are moments when she sees a glimmer, the shine that tells her he’s in there, and then it is gone.
“Lucky?” he says.
“Lucky’s no more,” she says.
“Lucy?”
She shakes her head. “That was a long time ago,” she says. “Lucky is long gone.”
She gives him a pat on the head and a quick scratch behind the ears. “Errands to run,” she says. “I’m leaving you with Philip.”
“Philip?”
“The pool boy,” she says.
“Is Philip the same as Bennett?” Bennett was his bodyguard and chauffeur from gubernatorial days.
“Yes,” she says.
“Well, why don’t you just say so? What’s all the mystery? Why don’t you call him Bennett?”
“I don’t want to confuse him,” she says.
Philip is the LPN. He fills the daily minder—pill container, doles out the herbal supplements, and gives the baths. The idea of a male nurse is so unmasculine that it sickens her. She thinks of male nurses as weaklings, serial killers, repressed homosexuals.
Philip was Dr. Sibley’s idea. For a while they had part-time help, a girl in the afternoons. One afternoon she came home from shopping and asked how he was.
“He have good lunch,” the girl said, followed by “Your husband have very big penis.”
She found him in the sunroom with an erection. “Would you look at me,” he said.
“Sometimes, as memory fades, a man becomes more aggressive, more sexual,” Sibley said. “The last thing we’d want is a bastard baby claiming to be the President’s child. Avoid the issue,” Sibley advised. “Hire this Philip fellow. He comes highly recommended. Call him the President’s personal trainer.”
From the beginning, there is something about Philip that she doesn’t like—something hard to put her finger on, something sticky, almost gooey, he is soft in the center like caramel.
She picks up the phone, dialing the extension for the pool house.
“Should I come in now?” Philip asks.
“Why else would I call?”
“Philip is going to give you your treatment, and then maybe you’ll take a little nap.”
His treatment is a bath and a massage. He has become afraid of the shower—shooting water. Every day Philip gives him a treatment.
“Don’t leave me here alone,” he says, grabbing at the edge of her skirt, clinging, begging her not to leave.
“I can’t disappoint the people, now can I?” She pries his fingers off.
“I wouldn’t be myself without you,” he says rummaging around, looking for something. “Where is my list? My lines? I’ve got calls to make. Remind me, what’s her name, with the accent? Mugs?”
“Margaret Thatcher?” Philip says.
He looks at her for confirmation. She nods.
“See you later,” she says.
He picks up the phone. It automatically rings in the kitchen. In order to get an outside line you have to dial a three-digit code.
“Operator,” Soledad says, picking up.
“Put me through to Mrs. Thatcher,” he says.
“One moment, please,” Soledad says. She makes the ring, ring sound. “Good afternoon, London here.” Soledad mimicks an English accent. “America calling,” she says, switching back to her operator voice. “I have the President on the line.”—“Jolly well, then, put him through,” she says in her English accent. “You’re on the line, sir, go ahead,” she says.